ITA-doctoral candidate Martin Scheurer was awarded Hanns Voith Foundation Prize 2019 in ‘New Materials’ category in Germany with prize money of €5,000. He received the prize for his thesis ‘Development of a method for evaluating suitability of textiles for use in textile reinforced concrete’ which shows how textiles can be used in textile reinforced concrete.

So far, testing the suitability of new textiles for use in textile reinforced concrete has been very time-consuming and expensive. The current approval process for textiles in textile concrete requires an intensive testing programme of over 50 different tests. With the method developed by Scheurer, only three different tests are necessary to make a good initial assessment of the suitability of textiles for use in textile reinforced concrete. Scheurer enables companies to find an initial assessment of the suitability of their textiles for use in textile reinforced concrete within a period of approximately one month, which is relatively inexpensive, said ITA in a press release.

Target group for this newly developed method are textile manufacturers who want to enter the growing textile reinforced concrete market. The use for the textile manufacturers is the lowering of market en-trance barriers. An enterprise can find out now whether the entrance into the textile reinforced concrete market with existing textiles is possible.

Textile reinforced concrete is a new material with the potential to revolutionise the construction industry. In textile reinforced concrete, the traditional steel reinforcement is replaced by high-performance textiles made of glass or carbon fibres. The use of textile reinforced concrete as a material makes thin concrete elements possible, since the textiles, unlike steel, do not rust and therefore much less concrete has to be used as protection against corrosion. This saves material, weight and carbon dioxide. Since cement production for the production of concrete causes three times as much carbon dioxide as global aviation, at 6.5 per cent of CO2-emissions, the use of textile concrete is considered to be highly environmentally friendly. In addition, the use of textile concrete allows greater freedom of de-sign due to the simple formability of the textiles and thus offers new architectural possibilities.

Since 2013, the Hanns Voith Foundation has awarded the Hanns Voith Foundation prizes annually to outstanding and innovative final theses of universities and part-time institutions, awarding a masters or diploma degree. From the 23 master theses submitted, the jury has awarded five prize winners for their outstanding work in the fields of drive technology, digital ventures, new materials, hydropower, and economics for the seventh time in a row in 2019.

The core of the ITA Group is the research and teaching institution, the Institut für Textiltechnik of RWTH Aachen University. The ITA Group is an international research and training service provider for fibre-based high-performance materials, textile semi-finished products and their manufacturing processes with 350 employees. (PC)